Contract Review and Analysis (Post Signature)

Why should a company use contract review and analysis (post signature)?

A corporate legal or compliance department uses contract review and analysis software to reduce the risk of non-compliance with signed contracts and analyze data and metadata to recommend best practices in contract formation, execution, and renewal.

What features does contract review and analysis software include?

Contract review and analysis software includes features to manage a contract repository and perform no-code or low-code database management tasks, such as configuring tables, fields, and relationships. The software generates notifications, reports, dashboards, and other visualizations to monitor contract performance and renewals. It can help create invoices and payments, manage source and supplier information, and classify and index contracts based on organizational criteria.

The software can include automated capabilities using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to analyze and classify ingested contracts, detect clauses, and extract field information and critical metadata. AI-based features can increase contract visibility, pinpoint risky terms, and identify personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive data.

Use the following checklist to compare features of contract review and analysis software:

• Contract date extraction, due diligence, and batch comparison
• Contract performance monitoring (post-execution)
• Invoicing and payments management or integrations
• Renewals and expiration
• Reports and dashboards.
• Tracking, notifications and reminders, and execution
• Mobile access to contract database
• Contract repository and database management -- Access controls -- Audit trail tracking -- Back-up and recovery -- Contract analytics -- Contract classification and indexing based on user criteria -- Contract metadata -- Search full text and metadata

How can my company use contract review and analysis (post signature) software?

A company should use contract review and analysis software if it primarily executes buy-side contracts, risks non-compliance with contractual obligations, or regularly misses renewals, termination, or other opportunities to lessen risk exposure. The software will help a company manage all agreements, buy and sell-side, in a single repository to monitor performance, assess risk, and timely renew or terminate contracts.

Should I choose contract review and analysis software that is cloud-based or on-premises?

Look to cloud-based contract review and analysis software-as-a-service (SaaS) where it meets or exceeds the performance, reliability, and security of on-premises resources. If you are a small or midsize organization, SaaS allows you to compete with the resources garnered by larger organizations. All companies can reduce the total cost of ownership in a contract review and analysis SaaS.

Contract review and analysis SaaS requires no capital expenditures (CAPEX) to acquire hardware and relieves organizations of maintaining on-premises servers and software. The user experience from a contract review and analysis SaaS is like on-premises systems. With SaaS, users get immediate access to the software’s latest features and security updates in the cloud, and organizations can quickly add functionality to manage the entire lifecycle of contracts.

Consider on-premises contract review and analysis software if your organization is not ready to transfer signed contracts to cloud-based repositories or you support legacy systems that cloud-based resources cannot access. An on-premises deployment of contract review and analysis software would not prohibit a later migration to the cloud and adding software to manage the entire lifecycle of contracts. An organization must have an IT budget and staff to support an on-premises contract review and analysis software deployment.

Should I select an all-in-one or an a-la-carte offering of contract review and analysis software?

Select an a-la-carte offering of contract review and analysis software or SaaS from a contract lifecycle management (CLM) provider. You may not need a full-featured product with AI-based tools. You can add AI features when you see how the software can reduce risk on post-signature contracts. If you also engage in sell-side agreements, you can add features to minimize risks in pre-signature processes to draft and negotiate contracts and third-party papers with pre-approved terms and conditions.

What should I expect to pay for contract review and analysis software?

Pricing models vary for contract review and analysis software, but most offerings have predictable and consistent monthly and annual costs. Providers generally price the software by tiered users, such as those who manage contracts, stakeholders who approve renewals, and staff who view contract status. Look to prices less than $60 per user per month. Most providers should discount contract review and analysis software to lead you to license CLM software.

Cloud-based systems usually allow unlimited storage space for contracts. Some providers include an onboarding service as part of the license, but others may apply a one-time consulting fee.